Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

She hit the right switch and one-handedly got her own headset on.

"—immediately," a flat translator voice greeted her. "Repeat: the unauthorized Ctencri flyer is to land immediately."

"If you have any interest in the cable we've discovered, you'd better not bother us," Hafner said, his voice betraying none of the uncertainties of a minute ago.

"We have in our possession delicate equipment vital to the operation of the machinery. So just pull back and let us go our way." Without waiting for a reply, he reached over and shut off the transmitter. "All right," he said to Carmen,

"double back and head southwest toward the spot where Flyer Two crashed."

"Mind letting me in on the secret?" she asked as she put the craft into a right turn.

"No secret, just a hunch. As you pointed out earlier we've flown over that area several times before … but Flyer Two was heading due south when it failed, and I'm pretty sure we've never passed by going anywhere near that direction."

Carmen thought it over for a long minute. It wasn't impossible, she realized; something like a long underground solenoid or antenna could conceivably provide that kind of directional dependence. But it could just have easily have been a oneshot event. "I hope you're right," she said aloud, wishing she'd known all this when there was still a chance of talking him out of it. "So what do you want me to do, run an S-curve over the region and assume our pursuers will follow a straight north-south path?"

"Exactly. I'm hoping they'll be smart enough to realize that if they just stay with us we'll eventually run out of fuel and have to land. That may keep their trigger fingers steady long enough—yipe!"

Carmen twitched violently, the flyer's automatic systems smoothing out the effect on their motion. Bare meters away, flanking them on both sides, the alien flyers had suddenly appeared. Close up, she realized for the first time just how big they really were.

"Carmen!" Hafner's cry was half agonized expletive, half bewildered question.

"I don't know," she shook her head, feeling her own nerve sliding away. "Twenty seconds ago they were fifteen kilometers away—I never even saw them move."

She broke off, forcing her mind back to the task at hand. For all their superior equipment, she told herself firmly, we know something they don't. But how to use that knowledge, now that their opponents would be watching their every move?

She thought of a way. Maybe.

"Take a deep breath, Peter," she ordered, "and brace yourself. Here goes nothing."

Ahead, Olympus was sweeping toward them like an inverted tornado. Pulling back on the stick, Carmen shoved the throttle to full power, sending the flyer arcing toward the clouds. The alien craft matched the maneuver without the slightest trouble that she could detect; matched it again when she turned the flyer to point due south. Olympus's cone flashed past, far beneath and to her right.

Somewhere along here Flyer Two had lost all power—

Gritting her teeth, she shut down the repulsers.

The sudden silence seemed to roar in her ears. She spared a quick glance to the side, found Hafner tight-lipped but with the look of understanding in his eyes.

Giving her full attention to flaps and elevons, she tried to remember every scrap she'd ever learned about gliding. The review, unfortunately, didn't take long.

"Any idea what our range is like this?" Hafner asked, his voice studiously casual.

"None." She tried to match his tone, but her performance wasn't nearly as good as his. "We were still climbing when I cut power and we're just leveling out now. It all depends on the glide characteristics of this thing, and I have no idea what those are. I think we'll be past the crash site before we have to restart the engines, but I don't know how much farther than that we'll get."

Hafner turned and gazed out the window. "Staying right with us, aren't they? I wonder how we'll be able to tell if—hey! He's dropping below us a bit."

Carmen shot a glance out her side. "This one, too." Could it have happened already? Without so much as a flash of light or crackle of radio static to mark the event? "Hang on," she told Hafner. "We're going to gamble."

Pulling back on the stick, she brought the flyer's nose up sharply, killing their forward momentum in a standard stall maneuver. If the aliens still had power, they would have no trouble staying with her … and with most of their speed gone, she would have no choice but to give up and abort the whole plan—

"They're still going down!" Hafner called, his fist slamming excitedly onto the edge of the control board. "They're gliding, too. We did it!"

Carmen's reply was a long exhalation of a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Pulling out of the stall, she sent them into a lazy starboard turn. Only when they were heading west did she risk starting the engines again. They caught at once, and as she started them back toward Olympus she flipped on the radio once more. "Attention, invaders," she said. "Your aircraft, which we ordered to back off, have been dealt with. If you value your lives you will leave Astra immediately." Switching off, she gave Hafner a tight smile. "If nothing else, that should confuse them."

But Hafner was still staring out the window. "Carmen, can you take us back toward where the aliens just went down? I'm not sure, but I think it's started."

It had indeed started.

Unnoticeably at first, of course. Aboard the huge M'zarch landing craft the only indication was a slight vibration, unexplained but not especially worrisome; the troops outside, their attention turned outward, never noticed as the skids melted silently into the ground. The giant ships sank down to rest on their bellies and continued further … and by the time the hull-breach alarms began their clanging, it was too late. The underside repulsers, already being eaten away, could not be fired.

For many aboard the ships it was too late in another sense as well. Trapped inside their attack-resistant rooms, their minds and reflexes slowed by shock, they found themselves inexorably crushed to death as ceilings were brought down by disintegrating walls and combat armor dissolved into the sandy ground like spun sugar in water. And since these were precisely the people who were considered too valuable to risk outside, the ground troops suddenly found themselves on their own, without senior officers, tacticians, or clan liaisons … or heavy weapon support, intersquad and long-range communications, or defensive sensor cover.

"We have destroyed your landing craft," the Human commander's flat voice came from the translator at the High Command's Chosen's elbow. "You will order your troops to abandon their weapons and surrender or they will likewise be destroyed."

The Chosen's fingers twitched with reaction. It was impossible—M'zarch armored landers couldn't be neutralized so quickly by anything short of nuclear weapons.

But neutralized they had been, and the troop carrier's own sensors had picked up no sign of a nuclear blast. Had the alien Spinneret technology included weaponry?

If so, it was more vital than ever that the M'zarch people gain control of this world.

The S'tarm Clan Liaison behind him might have been listening to his soul. "You must not let such technology exist outside M'zarch possession," he said.

The Chosen controlled his temper. "I am listening for suggestions as to strategy," he said, directing his words to all the clan liaisons and High Command officers on the bridge. "I have one-way communication with my ground troops; I can order them to attack and even direct their actions, though at low efficiency. But it is not reasonable to assume the Humans will not use their weapon against the troops if an attack is ordered."

"It is the purpose of troops to give their lives to advance M'zarch holdings—" someone began.